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Konami Japan decides to adopt the US name "Castlevania" for all future releases of the Demon Castle Dracula series, with this being the first. The Nocturne in the Moonlight engine is adopted again, but this time is miles beyond the Circle of the Moon incarnation in visual quality. The sprites are larger, more colorful, and have more animation. Some are even directly ripped from NitM. On top of the excellent graphics, KCET added very nice sound and voice effects. Almost every enemy has some nice scream they make, and it sounds fantastic. The only bad area of this title, unfortunately, is the music. Yes, the series that has bestowed upon us the most memorable tunes in games has finally hit the wall. The music sounds awful and this could be a side effect of using such high quality sound effects. I'm pretty upset about this, but the game itself is so superb and polished in all other areas, that it's still great. If you want a taste of what the in-game music would sound like without any handicap, check out one of the game's main themes that plays during the ending credits and shed a tear :~(.The hero, Jeust Belmont, is the product of Ralph Belmont and Sypha Belnades from Legend of Demon Castle, and has abilities from both. Your standard Belmont whip and sub weapon action, and the Spell Book sub weapons of Sypha. The spell books boost your sub weapon with the element of whichever book you have activated via a sub menu. The effects of these boosts are very dramatic and are what use up Juest's MP gauge. For example, a combo of the Ice Book and Cross sub weapon creates a huge ice cross that floats high in the air. This new weapon then spins rapidly, firing tiny fragments of itself in the direction of the nearest foe until there's nothing left. And like Alucard in NitM, the MP gauge gradually replenishes over time. Also like Alucard, there are other action abilities that can be gained such as sliding, double jumping, and from the beginning Jeust can perform a very Alucard-esque dodge move using the GBA's shoulder buttons. It's funny that the GBA has so many better games than both of the latest nex gen systems combined, this being one.
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